Even if you don’t like Shakespeare’s work you will probably have heard the line I have used for my title and it is the line which opens the play Twelfth Night. This play is a story of love and loss and also a study of gender roles and sexuality. As always with Shakespeare it is a play wich delves deep into human nature and human interaction.
The speaker of the first line is Count Orsino and pretentious man who believes himself to be in love with Countess Olivia but who is actually more in love with the ideal of love. Olivia, whose brother has just died, has vowed to mourn her brother for seven years and shun the company of men.
The play then cuts to a shipwreck and Viola, washed up on the enemy shore of Illyria and alone, having been separated from her twin brother Sebastian who she believes to be dead. To make her way in this enemy land Viola dresses as a boy and calls herself Cesario and makes her way to Orsino’s court where she becomes a favourite of Orsino and is sent to woo Olivia on his behalf.
This play is a comedy which meant in Shakespeare’s time a formula that involved misrule and misunderstandings before order was restored. Once Viola/Cesario goes to woo Olivia the misunderstandings begin. Olivia falls in love with Cesario/Viola obviously believing her to be male. Viola/Cesario falls in love with Count Orsino but cannot profess her love as he too believes her to be male. Orsino, as mentioned before, says he is in love with Olivia but shows signs of being in love with Cesario/Viola despite the fact that he thinks she is a man.
Add to this the re-emergence of Sebastian, Viola’s supposedly dead twin brother who various characters then mistake for Viola/Cesario and a sub plot involving Olivia’s household and their, often cruel, attempts to discredit the pompous butler Malvolio and you can see how, for a while anyway, chaos reigns.
I have had occasion to study this play on two occasions and it is one of my favourites. It looks at what it means to be in love and what it means to think you should be in love. It examines the nature of ’male’ and ’female’ roles and ways of thinking, blurs the concept of gender more than somewhat and comes to the conclusion that we are not all that different whatever our gender. This play also looks at sexuality and again blurs the concept that men only fall in love with women and women with men.
I firmly believe that plays should be watched rather than read, that was the purpose for which they were written. However this is also a good play to read and the characters are so well described by their words that it is not difficult to imagine the action. This play has enough twists and turns to keep you reading to see if it will all be sorted out in the end.